Comment by ddlsmurf

4 hours ago

we need a tax on companies using or selling anything OSS, the funds of which go into OSS, the wealth it generated is insane, and it's nearly all just donations of experts

That's a bit unclear on the concept. It's not open source if you have to pay for it. How about charging money for your code instead?

  • Well that's not strictly true.

    OSS is allowed to make money and there are projects that require paid licenses for commerical use.

    The source is available and collaborative.

    Qt states this on their site: Simply put, this is how it works: In return for the value you receive from using Qt to create your application, you are expected to give back by contributing to Qt or buying Qt.

  • There is nothing in the open source licensees that prevents charging money, in fact, non-commercial clauses are seen as incompatible with the Debian Free Software Guidelines.

    And there is a lot of companies out there that make their money based on open source software, red hat is maybe the biggest and most well known.

    • I meant in the sense that someone else can redistribute the source for free, not that the company has to do it.

      > The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.

      https://opensource.org/osd